50 Great Meditation Quotes

“Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.” ~ Voltaire

Delight in mediation and solitude. Compose yourself, be happy. You are a seeker. ~ Buddha

“Through my love for you, I want to express my love for the whole cosmos, the whole of humanity, and all beings. By living with you, I want to learn to love everyone and all species. If I succeed in loving you, I will be able to love everyone and all species on Earth… This is the real message of love.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Teachings on Love

“If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.” ~ Amit Ray, Om Chanting and Meditation

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.” ~ T.S. Eliot

“Meditation is a way for nourishing and blossoming the divinity within you.” ~ Amit Ray

Meditation brings wisdom – lack of meditation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom. ~ Buddha

“The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life, the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order, and from there move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order, then that very order will bring about its own limitation, and the mind will be its prisoner. In all this movement you must somehow begin from the other end, from the other shore, and not always be concerned with this shore or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water, not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are, where you are going, what the end is.” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

“Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature. Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature.” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

“The act of meditation is being spacious.” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

“Meditation practice is like piano scales, basketball drills, ballroom dance class. Practice requires discipline; it can be tedious; it is necessary. After you have practiced enough, you become more skilled at the art form itself. You do not practice to become a great scale player or drill champion. You practice to become a musician or athlete. Likewise, one does not practice meditation to become a great meditator. We meditate to wake up and live, to become skilled at the art of living.” ~ Elizabeth Lesser, The Seeker’s Guide

“Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It is a way of entering into the quiet that is already there – buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day” ~ Deepack Chopra

“Meditation is the ultimate mobile device; you can use it anywhere, anytime, unobtrusively.” ~ Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation

“Meditation needs no results. Meditation can have itself as an end, I meditate without words and on nothingness. What tangles my life is writing.” ~ Hélène Cixous, Coming to Writing and Other Essays

Meditation is a tool to shake yourself awake. A way to discover what you love. A practice to return yourself to your body when the mind medleys threaten to usurp your sanity.” ~ Geneen Roth, Women, Food, and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything

“When even one virtue becomes our nature, the mind becomes clean and tranquil. Then there is no need to practice meditation; we will automatically be meditating always. (151)” ~ Swami Satchidananda, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

Meditation, then, is bringing the mind home.” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

“Meditation is an essential travel partner on your journey of personal transformation. Meditation connects you with your soul,and this connection gives you access to your intuition, your heartfelt desires, your integrity, and the inspiration to create a life you love.” ~ Sarah McLean

“Every soul innately yearns for stillness, for a space, a garden where we can till, sow, reap, and rest, and by doing so come to a deeper sense of self and our place in the universe. Silence is not an absence but a presence. Not an emptiness but repletion A filling up.” ~ Anne Leclaire

“The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality, and the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it with the world as they think about it and talk about it and describe it. For on the one hand there is the real world and on the other there is a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds. These are very very useful symbols, all civilization depends on them, but like all good things they have their disadvantages, and the principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth.” ~ Alan Wilson Watts

“Because the development of inner calm & energy happens completely within & isn’t dependent on another person or a particular situation, we begin to feel a resourcefulness and independence that is quite beautiful—and a huge relief.” ~ Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation

“Meditation is a microcosm, a model, a mirror. The skills we practice when we sit are transferable to the rest of our lives.” ~ Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation

“The difference between magic and meditation methods is the difference between drugs and diet—medicines will do swiftly what diet can only effect slowly, and in critical cases there is no time to wait for the slow processes of dietetics, so it must be either medicines or nothing. Nevertheless, drugs are no substitute for right diet and wholesome regime, and although magic enables a speedy and potent result to be attained, is is only by means of right understanding and right ethics that the position which has been won can be held.” ~ Dion Fortune, Esoteric Orders and Their Work and The Training and Work of the Initiate

“Meditation is a powerful and full study as can effectually taste and employ themselves.” ~ Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“The seeker after stillness should be told that the stillness is always there. Indeed it is in every man. But he has to learn, first, to let it in and, second, how to do so. The first beginning of this is to remember. The second is to recognize the inward pull. For the rest, the stillness itself will guide and lead him to itself.” ~ Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of Paul Brunton

“Suffering is due to our disconnection with the inner soul. Meditation is establishing that connection.” ~ Amit Ray

“Meditation is like going to the bottom of the sea, where everything is calm and tranquil. On the surface of the sea there may be a multitude of waves but the sea is not affected below. In its deepest depths, the sea is all silence. When we start meditating, first we try to reach our own inner existence, our true existence- that is to say, the bottom of the sea. Then when the waves come from the outside world, we are not affected. Fear, doubt, worry and all the earthly turmoils just wash away, because inside us is solid peace. Thoughts cannot touch us, because our mind is all peace, all silence, all oneness. Like fish in the sea, they jump and swim but leave no mark. When we are in our highest meditation, we feel that we are the sea, and the animals in the sea cannot affect us. We feel that we are the sky, and all the birds flying past cannot affect us. Our mind is the sky and our heart is the infinite sea. This is meditation.” ~ Sri Chinmoy

“Meditation is a mysterious method of self-restoration. It involves “shutting” out the outside world, and by that means sensing the universal “presence” which is, incidentally, absolute perfect peace. It is basically an existential “time-out”—a way to “come up for a breath of air” out of the noisy clutter of the world. But don’t be afraid, there is nothing arcane or supernatural or creepy about the notion of taking a time-out. Ball players do it. Kids do it, when prompted by their parents. Heck, even your computer does it (and sometimes not when you want it to). So, why not you? A meditation can be as simple as taking a series of easy breaths, and slowly, gently counting to ten in your mind.” ~ Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“We must experience the Truth in a direct, practical and real way; this is only possible in the stillness and silence of the mind, and this is achieved by means of meditation.” ~ Samael Aun Weor, The Revolution of the Dialectic: A Practical Guide to Gnostic Psychology and Meditation

“Quiet the mind, and the soul will speak.” ~ Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati

Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine.
~ Buddha

Each human being was given two possibilities: action and contemplation. Both lead to the same place. ~ Paulo Coelho

If we want to save the world, we must have a plan. But no plan will work unless we meditate. ~ Dalai Lama

Suppose you read about a pill that you could take once a day to reduce anxiety and increase your contentment. Would you take it? Suppose further that the pill has a great variety of side effects, all of them good: increased self-esteem, empathy, and trust; it even improves memory. Suppose, finally, that the pill is all natural and costs nothing. Now would you take it? The pill exists. It is meditation. ~ Jonathan Haidt

Meditation is to be aware of what is going on in your body, in your feelings, in your mind, and in the world. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Here is my wish for you and every other child, woman, and man on the face of the earth: Spend one week saying only kind, caring things to yourself. Say thank you at least ten times an hour, direct five toward yourself and five to the world at large. Compliment yourself (and others) each time an effort is made. Notice all the wonderful qualities and characteristics about yourself and those around you. One week. You will never go back. And your whole life will be a glorious meditation. ~ Cheri Huber

When you have the constant focus of going within and then acting, your life will unfold in magical ways. ~ Elizabeth Joy

Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing about who that is. It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not, namely the path that is your life. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

Meditation is the action of silence. ~ Krishnamurti

In dwelling, be close to the land. In meditation, go deep in the heart. ~ Lao Tzu

Prayer is when you talk to God; meditation is when you listen to God. ~ Diana Robinson

The kind of spirituality I value is one in which you get great joy out of contributing to life, not just sitting and meditating, although meditation is certainly valuable. But from meditation, from the resulting consciousness, I would like to see people in action creating the world they want to live in. ~ Marshall Rosenberg

If I do not go within, I go without. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. ~ Alan Watts

Kristin Russel is a certified yoga teacher, nutritionist, independent medical researcher, natural health consultant and author of many books. She marries the best of yoga, meditation, Ayurveda, nutrition science, and western medicine to help people get to the root of their imbalances and find optimal health. She is the author of many holistic health books including Beautiful hair: natural care, Yoga for Hair Growth and Yoga for Glowing Skin. She is a Wellness Specialist, Soul-Coach. She creates personalized packages for corporate and individuals seeking wellness solutions and adventure travel for the soul.